Failure Has to Be Acceptable

General Electric's John Rice talks with WSJ's Matt Murray about why he believes that large corporations can still create groundbreaking innovations.

Feb. 25, 2013 5:21 p.m. ET

John Rice
is vice chairman of
General Electric
Co.
and oversees the company's global growth from Hong Kong.

ENLARGE

John Rice
Darren Francis for The Wall Street Journal

ON THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE RELATED TO INNOVATION: It is encouraging people not to be prisoners of their operating plan. In a big company you have to have external commitments. We are paid to do what we say we're going to do. But we also have to throw a long pass every once in a while.

Video from Unleashing Innovation Conference

So you have to create a culture where [failure] is OK. You have to protect people who fail for the right reasons. If you fail because of some external event that you couldn't control, if your logic was right, if your execution was good and you fail for some reason that couldn't have been foreseen, I think that could be a reasonable reason for failure.

ON INNOVATION AS A GLOBAL EFFORT: I can't think of a product of any significance, any innovation that's come from our company, that has been born from the work that took place in just one country. If you try to draw a wall around innovation in the U.S., in China, in Singapore—it isn't going to work.

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com.